Stephanie Ruhle this morning noted that Wilbur Ross, Trump's Secretary of Commerce, is affiliated with the Bank of Cyprus.

That's the bank where Paul Manafort deposited $17 million of Russian payments for lobbying on behalf of the pro-Russian candidate in Ukraine.

One hand washes the other in Trump World until they realize more than one of them may be wearing an FBI wire.

STEPHANIE RUHLE: Ali Velshi, put Russia aside. You have nine detailed pages of a Paul Manafort money trail. During the campaign, I went to see one of President Trump's largest Wall Street backers. He said, "Donald Trump, when it comes to business is a sloppy guy. There's a lot of business he's not going to want to be revealed." Whether you're talking about Paul Manafort or you continue the web, where was a lot of that money funneled through? I mentioned it earlier. Cypress! Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary, sits on the board of that bank. In 2014 he bought a stake in that bank.

ALI VELSHI: It could be a weird coincidence.

RUHLE: It could be a weird coincidence. But we can call Papadopoulos a coffee boy all day long. But if you have 75 million bucks being laundered and by the way, your commerce secretary sits on that board, I assure you, Robert Mueller is going to have more questions. It doesn't matter, if the White House wants to deflect and distract. Robert Mueller isn't getting distracted.

And in case you think Ross isn't hiding anything else? Forbes reported last week that "between the November election and January inauguration, he had quietly moved a chunk of assets into trusts for his family members, leaving more than $2 billion off of his financial disclosure report—and therefore out of the public eye. Ross revealed the existence of those assets, and the timing of the transfer, when Forbes asked why his financial disclosure form listed fewer assets than he had previously told the magazine he owned."

↓ Story continues below ↓

Must be nice to have those kind of problems, where to HIDE 2 billion dollars of your assets so federal government oversight can't look at where you got it.

Comments

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service (revised 3/17/2016) for information on our posting policy.